Wrath of the Lich King Preview

[Narkz]

Oh my god! Everything looks so detailed, no wonder they've not designed raid bosses yet. Saying that it looks like a few dungeon ones are done, could be mistaken. Can't wait to see what that fighting on the mount is all about, so hope it's a quest!

[Nodja]

I think that's a missquote. Nowhere is any citation where we get this information. There is one that says that they have made 0 raid bosses for the raiddungeon "Hall of the Aspects". Here, at the bottom: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of-wa.../872789p2.html

GameSpy: So in any given Wrath of the Lich King 10-man raid, how often will the Death Knight be the ideal tank for a given situation, as opposed to a Warrior, Druid or Paladin?

Kaplan: That's a good question, but we've designed zero raid bosses at this point, so I really couldn't tell you. A good way to think about it is not what you can or can't be successful at as a Death Knight tank. Someone earlier brought up the Shattered Halls dungeon's gauntlet where you have to fight off infinite elites, and a Paladin is the ideal tank for that situation.

@ http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of-wa.../872762p1.html first question

As someone who enjoys lore and experiencing new content there really is NO reason to do 25-mans though.

I play for...

1) Experiencing new content
2) Lore
3) Having semi-rare gear and being a *pretty little butterfly*

My whole point is if 10-mans give you everything a 25-man does I see no reason to do 25-mans at this point and I feel like alot of people will come to the same conclusion. Comparing heroic versions to regular 5-mans isn't a valid argument - Heroics provide unique loot tables with totally different looking gear. If Blizzard throws the same loot tables in 10 and 25 mans with only added stats it will be useless.

Then you're exactly the target of these 10-mans, casuals who want to enjoy the whole content. The 25-man versions still exist to maintain the more hardcore user base.

I don't get what u mean by this?

Meaning that basicaly 25-man raids in WLK are the heroic version of the 10-man. Same bosses, similar strategies only difficulty changes.

[Corbet]

Do they really expect to release this by the end of the year if they haven't designed any bosses yet?

[Nodja]

Do they really expect to release this by the end of the year if they haven't designed any bosses yet?

I believe that it's totally doable. They still have 7 months to go if they release on the november 30th date i saw on gametrailers.

Designing the bosses isn't really that hard for them, they are experienced at it and probably already have some ideas. Knowing blizzard they already know which bosses are going to show up and where, they just need to design the encounters themselves. It's common to leave this for last since you don't want to design an encounter that doesn't add up with the questlines and lore associated to them, which is being created right now.

edit: I forgot to mention. I don't believe on that release date, IMO it will be released in mid/late-summer. But my guess is as good as any.

[Deleted]

I love you Boubouille! ;D

Sooo excited about WotLK. I honestly think it'll just confirm WoW as the undefeated champion amongst MMO's and boost their position even more.

And cudos to Blizzard for taking so much of their player's suggestions into the game. I'm a hardcore raider myself, but I welcome the opening up of the instances to groups of 10 people aswell. Casuals have been wanting it for so long now, and it'll finally end (most) of the casuals vs hardcore crap.

[Kellan]

Great. Yet another class that STACKS debuff dots on target. Playing a class which relies on dispelling these, I can tell you already what a righteous pain in the behind this class is going to be since Blizzard has put 0 thought into the dispel mechanic.

Essentially, dispelling stacking debuffs generally take 3 or 4 times as long as stacking them up do, and while dispelling you do nothing else since they take a 1.5s GCD tick. Considering that the trash debuffs tend to be side-effects or instant effect outside GCD (frost mage slow effects, hunter pet poisons, etc), it is often better to just ignore the debuffs.

Ah well, I'll likely re-roll to that class anyway, considering that Blizzard has shown through action their unwillingness to continue developing the Paladin class at the same pace as most other classes.

Ok for priests though cause Abolish Disease is a hot type mechanic =p

[TheDesertDragon]

Another thing- I'm supposed to believe that Arthas, one of the most powerful characters in all of Warcraft Lore can be killed/beaten by 10 people at level 80?

Of course. I killed Cenarius with 10 Fel Orcs in Warcraft 3, and Cenarius was way more powerful than The Lich King. The only thing the Lich King has going for him is the amount of minions he controls, but as far as actual strength in person - it's not that insane.

But indeed, 10-man / 25-man is a great, but illogical, idea. Nevertheless, I think it's awesome and I look forward to downing The Lich King in a 10-man raid!

[Pyrostemplar]

Mmhh, lets see how this plays out.

It seems to me though that Blizzard has been cutting on wow development effort for quite some time. Arena focus is one example, heroic/normal mode instances another and the new 10/25 mode still another (not mentioning the "recolor the armor for better results" crap :P).

Anyway, some of the ideas are interesting.

[TheDesertDragon]

Mmhh, lets see how this plays out.

It seems to me though that Blizzard has been cutting on wow development effort for quite some time. Arena focus is one example, heroic/normal mode instances another and the new 10/25 mode still another (not mentioning the "recolor the armor for better results" crap :P).

Anyway, some of the ideas are interesting.

Disagreed. There are not less instances (in fact there are more) but you can play them in two different difficulty modes as well. So basically there will likely be more 10-man raids and 25-man raids indivudally than there were 10-man and 25-man instances in tBC combined, which is good.

Same goes for heroics, which didn't even exist pre-tBC. In fact, pre-tBC didn't really have any difficult 5-mans at all.

[Corbet]

One other thing I don't get - what exactly makes 25-mans more "hardcore" and 10-mans less so? If the new raids are the same for both 25 and 10-mans wouldn't they take the same time to clear and learn the fights?

[Pyrostemplar]

Disagreed. There are not less instances (in fact there are more) but you can play them in two different difficulty modes as well. So basically there will likely be more 10-man raids and 25-man raids indivudally than there were 10-man and 25-man instances in tBC combined, which is good.

Same goes for heroics, which didn't even exist pre-tBC. In fact, pre-tBC didn't really have any difficult 5-mans at all.

It takes less effort in creating 5 dungeons with two separate difficulty modes than to create 10 differing dungeons. I'm not saying that dual difficulty level is bad by itself - it is an obvious and probably intelligent use of resources.

More instances? BRD alone is probably the size of all TBC 5 man put together (ok, a bit of exaggeration, but not much) - so the number of instances is not all that significant. And we are talking about a game that must be generating several times the revenue it previously was (scale business).

Personally I thing that Blizzard/Vivendi is milking the cow - and all signs point to that tbqh.

But that is a bit OT anyway. I just hope that WotLK is far better than the substandard TBC was.

[Smartie]

Dot classes suck. If you cannot dispell it you just run off into a corner and die a slow death, for a game that is no fun at all. Playing a feral druid I have to stay with my target to keep dps'ing, a dot class its click click and onto the next. This game is going down hill by the day.

All these new things and they have not even addressed half of the existing issues.

[justinope]

disappointing to say the least

kinda like a o thats neat... I guess... type of thing


just makes WAR look more appealing with all their innovative ideas compared to these mediocre ones

[Pyrostemplar]

One other thing I don't get - what exactly makes 25-mans more "hardcore" and 10-mans less so? If the new raids are the same for both 25 and 10-mans wouldn't they take the same time to clear and learn the fights?

Well, there are two ways of approaching it:

• Either the encounters are the same and then 10 man is more "hard core". But the payer number difference is too great to have the encounters the same and not be a walk in the park for 25 man and extremely difficult for 10 man;
  
• The encounters are different, and the added requirements and coordination difficulty of having 25 man is indeed far above 10 man

Simply said, real raids take the larger amount of people. Yep, some even say that real raids are 40 raids, not hte 25 shallow version :P

[CreativeInstitute]

"All raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King will have both 10-person and 25-person versions. So at level 80, every major encounter and every big boss fight can be experienced with a group of 10."

Almost makes me wanna buy WoW again and level up a character. This is fantastic news.

I haven't seen any raids past karazhan on my main (although completed MH and BT on my brothers account), being a casual, I would have liked to properly see and progress through SSC/TK/MH/BT and all that, but can't/don't want to commit that sort of time to a computer game.

But this is great news. Yeah the 25 man gear will be better (and rightfully so) but at least casuals will see something more than just 2 or 3 of the expansions raid dungeons.


EDIT: Just saw the video trailer, the expansion is looking amazing. For a game with an old engine, and low polygon/texture count, it looks brilliant. Just goes to show art design >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> technical power.

[Aikiwoce]

I just read through the TC/Kalgan interview on curse-gaming, and came up with this tidbit:

"Potentially like... Legacy Items; we haven't really talked about those in the past. We are planning to do certain types of items that essentially bind to your account, so they're deliberately created as twink items. So you might be able to find one of these items when you're doing an endgame instance, or a raid, or something like that... and you might get an item that binds to your account and can send that off to your other characters, but it does have to stay within your account. So you can deliberately overpower a character to help level up or whatever."

Interesting concept, like sending off your old gear to your alt?

[Rishina]

The videos look brilliant! But i'm really not a fan of 10mans. It just seems to go against the very essence of the game. Its a massively multiplayer game. And 10 man raids where you are very very restricted in what you can take are not massively multiplayer. Blizzard doesn't help the matter by making more and more specs raid viable, and by having encounters were you need X player / class or you can't realistically do it.

[slinc]

Stacks of stuff on WorldofWar.net which has been up since this morning also. Awesome stuff

http://www.worldofwar.net/n/413356/b...g-presentation

* Official WotLK Zones movie!
* Wrath of the Lich King Presentation Summary
* Death Knight - New Info, (including spells and abilities)
* New screenshots
* Tom Chilton Video Interview
* Jeff Kaplan Video Interview (Read Transcript)
* J.Allen Brack Video Interview (Read transcript)
* Blizzard Museum Tour Video
* Blizzard office Tour Video
* Wrath Presentation - All the Facts, None of the Fluff

[Googolplex]

[*]Frost Presence -- Increases Armor by 45% and allows the Death Knight to generate 25% more threat. Only one presence can be active at any time. [*]Anti-magic Shield -- Reduces the damage of the next magical spell cast on the Death Knight by 75%. It also converts the damage reduced into Runic Power.

Slightly overpowered ?

[Hagen]

Knockbacks will be very difficult to balance in PvP - just think how OP snowballs are in Alterac. But it will be fun nontheless.